HELD-BREATH TIME

At last I realized that there was another step in the 7Up series that I hadn’t seen. This is 49 Up, made in 2003, when they were 49, which is 19 years younger than I am. All through, they have been the ages that my children would be now if I’d had children about the usual time. They are about the ages of Bob Scriver’s grandchildren because Bob’s daughter was just a year older than me, graduating a year ahead of Ivan Doig here in Valier, and starting her family just a few blocks away. She left in the year of the Big Flood, 1965, a single parent, and her children grew up feeling like Pacific Northwest people. The oldest of her children, a girl, died in a car accident in Florida in 1980 while I was at seminary in Chicago -- or actually, since it was in summer, while I was doing my hospital chaplaincy in Rockford, IL. The other three have children of their own, old enough for college. I wrote very little about descendants, though there is a great deal to think about. Partly I felt a bit protective and partly there just wasn’t room. The older boy, Lane, spent his sixth summer with us but not the seventh, I think. At least after that not alone but with his sibs.

One of the reasons I wanted to watch these 7Up films was that I’m bracing for the consequences of this book about Bob Scriver being published. On the one hand, as I said to the editor at the Great Falls Tribune, “ A lot of mice might run out of the haystack.” (If you’ve ever helped feed cows, you’ll know what I mean.) One category of consequences will be about living here where people know Bob, his family, the Blackfeet -- some of them ARE Blackfeet! Another category will be about Bob’s artistic reputation and the impact on the various institutions that dominate and control Art of the American West, the people I refer to as “the Industrial Cowboy Art Cartel.” Involved will be the Montana Historical Society, which has his estate, and the other will be the CM Russell Museum, which expected his estate. The Canadian institutions, such as the Glenbow and the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton, will feel it less -- though I think they might be startled to realize how much he was Canadian.

Of course there will be impact on me, partly because it is a pledge fulfilled -- Bob wanted me to write a book about him, though he would have changed the form and content -- and that frees me to go on to other projects and kinds of writing. I will be quite revealed myself, since the main way of showing what Bob was like in some regards was by showing him through my eyes. And no one can write without revealing themselves anyway. But I don’t want to be a “one-book Charlie.”

Resistance to being revealed was sometimes very strong among the 7Ups. The spouses were not so worried about it, though several simply asked to be left out. The kids often seemed rather proud. Suzie seems to have a lady’s reticence, something like my Strachan cousins. John is harder to understand since he thinks of politics and is in truth an enormously worthy man who does many things for others. As they got older, they got more willing to tell Apted off, which tells something about them. Taken as a group, they are simply so lovable, endure such heartbreak and recover so well, that -- now get this, John! -- the point is that we see what it is to be human. It’s enormously instructive and inspiring.

One of the hardest lessons is that things change all the time. In my case, and maybe it was something in me, I got to seminary just as politically “correct” theory grabbed literature by the throat and made it largely unintelligible. I went into the ministry just as it stopped being a privileged (!) intellectual pursuit and became a sort of cross between the Chamber of Commerce and a therapy group. These changes hurt because I’ve always wanted to be an “intellectual,” a person who thinks big thoughts, maybe about thinking itself -- not a matter of accumulating facts or theories, but a matter of joining a company that reflects carefully. I’ve always gotten good enough grades and test results to be in that “top” (is it really?) group, but only at the bottom of the group. So I’m running along behind all the time, gasping to be heard. When I’ve tried to explain all this to friends, I’ve offended them greatly. They think of an “education” as a stamp of status, a set of hoops, a passport. When I get impatient that they don’t understand, they get angry.

Then, BINGO, along came the Internet and I’m THERE. I can read at high levels (my own speed), answer back in comments, and publish every day, regardless of what gatekeepers might say. I can even time travel: reading material, looking at art, entering contexts that used to be accessible only by spending huge amounts of money to travel to them -- IF you knew they existed. I don’t want this book and its aftermath to take up so much of my time that I can’t do this anymore. On the other hand, there’s an obligation to the piece of work and to Bob’s work. A body of work can be like a child and need nurturing. One can delight in it.

In this commodified world money is the focus of many people. I find a total imbalance between the publishers, who make nice salaries and will take 95% of the profit for very little of the work, and myself, who had to wait for subsidy from Social Security and my mother’s legacy to give me this house and now keep being told I must come up with more money to buy my own book, to get a passport into Canada, to travel to speak. But they did their work well, at least the editor and layout artist, and I knew what the bargain was. What I’m getting is the prestige -- funnily enough, because one would think that a U of Chicago degree and ten years in the ministry would represent prestige or even ten years of teaching on the reservation might be better sources. Having been married to Bob has turned out to be a burden rather than an advantage. Not because of him, but because of attitudes towards divorce. Prosperous white men [sic] often consider one disenfranchised, unworthy, and contemptible -- a kind of runaway slave.

I’ve always had a willingness to work ordinary jobs -- animal control, clerical work, foundry artisan -- and got paid better for that. Is that my fault or the world’s fault? Or does it matter so long as one eats? I think it has made my life richer, fuller, and my writing more grounded, more relevant. The bridge has been my original education as an actor: “there are no small parts, only small actors.” But my classmates and friends from that time understand me least. I’m closest now to the people I knew in the early Sixties in Browning, my former students esp., but many have died already.

I’ve made a special effort to re-connect with my relatives on the Strachan side, my father’s Scots side. My mother’s side is quite alien -- not because I’m not a Pinkerton, but that my mother’s sisters all married Hatfields and those uncles have overwhelmed the outcomes. Yet some of my Hatfield cousins’ children are more like me. They don’t know it -- have no contact with me. Maybe they’ll read this book and get curious. Weirdest of all, some of my attraction to Bob Scriver and investment in life in Browning comes from my earliest small-child impressions on the Hatfield ranches.

This held-breath time, this zero-degrees time, this 7Up time, is like the pause just before the tide comes back in. Not Dover Beach, a long-withdrawing roar across a pebble shingle, but a gradual silvering returning across a long expanse of sand. Like the turnaround at Seaside. At least that’s what I hope for.